was likeliest it should, by the express or tacit consent of the children
when they were grown up, be in the father, where it seemed without any
change barely to continue; when indeed nothing more was required to it,
than the permitting the father to exercise alone, in his family, that
executive power of the law of nature, which every free man naturally
hath, and by that permission resigning up to him a monarchical power,
whilst they remained in it. But that this was not by any paternal right,
but only by the consent of his children, is evident from hence, that no
body doubts, but if a stranger, whom chance or business had brought to
his family, had there killed any of his children, or committed any other
fact, he might condemn and put him to death, or other-wise have punished
him, as well as any of his children; which it was impossible he should do
by virtue of any paternal authority over one who was not his child, but
by virtue of that executive power of the law of nature, which, as a man,
he had a right to: and he alone could punish him in his family, where the
respect of his children had laid by the exercise of such a power, to give
way to the dignity and authority they were willing should remain in him,
above the rest of his family. (*It is no improbable opinion therefore,
which the archphilosopher was of, that the chief person in every houshold
was always, as it were, a king: so when numbers of housholds joined
themselves in civil societies together, kings were the first kind of
governors amongst them, which is also, as it seemeth, the reason why the
name of fathers continued still in them, who, of fathers, were made
rulers; as also the ancient custom of governors to do as Melchizedec, and
being kings, to exercise the office of priests, which fathers did at the
first, grew perhaps by the same occasion. Howbeit, this is not the only
kind of regiment that has been received in the world. The inconveniences
of one kind have caused sundry others to be devised; so that in a word,
all public regiment, of what kind soever, seemeth evidently to have risen
from the deliberate advice, consultation and composition between men,